About an hour before we were supposed to go, Self slammed on the brakes. Wrenching the wheel to the left, she steered the car directly over the edge of the cliff.

I said – wait, Self!
What is happening?
Why are we driving off the cliff?
Why are we plummeting to a fiery wreck?
Why don’t we just go and order cabinets?

And Self was like– no one knows! Death before commitment!

The Acquisition Trollsaid– yup. For sure. THOSE are your kitchen cabinets.
No need to think about it.
Hurry.

Then I had to go and explain this to Paul.
Then I had to deal with Rage Paul.

And the thing about Rage Paul is that I always understand.
At first.

I understand why he is frustrated… I understand why he is irritated… I understand why he is turning green and exploding out of his clothing.

But eventually, I lose patience because I am NOT doing this to aggravate him.

This is who I am.

I am SORRY that I am engineered in the most specific way possible to make you insane. HOWEVER. What do you want me to do? As far as I know, there is no surgical option for a personality transplant.

But eventually, my understanding begins to wears thin. I begin to construct in my head, dissertations on the theme: Self has feelings too, you know.

After a while, the mental-dissertations get pretty righteous.

I start to get mad at Rage Paul. Because I ACCEPT him… But Rage Paul, does NOT accept Self.

This seems deeply unfair and it makes me want to remind Rage Paul that he chose me… He COULD have married someone else, but apparently, he WANTED this in his life. How is that my fault?

Also, I could point out that Rage Paul is just as illogical as Self… After all, Rage Paul says things like– I cannot even talk to you right now. And leaves the room. And then comes back in to talk at Self at top volume.

But I cannot say any of that. Because technically this is all my fault.

And also because I cannot make it worse… Because I need Rage Paul to agree to go and look at these bookcases.

Then I am going to need him to agree to overpay for them. Because Self BELIEVES THEM TO BE THE THING.

Although later it will be revealed that they are not the thing… and that in reality, Self was suffering delusions brought on by fear of commitment, and agitation at losing out on Giant Fancy Things, and also because Self has restraint issues and hoarding issues and a host of other avoidance-based coping skills that always make a flaming pile of mess that someone else needs to sort out because Self cannot deal with it.

As soon as we got home, Self was finished with the event and wanted to read in bed with Elvis.

A GFT acquisition is mentally tiring and requires extra time for recuperation… but even Self was aware that she needed to pretend to be ongoingly-enthusiastic, otherwise Paul’s head would explode.

We brought a bookcase into the kitchen and screwed a cleat to the wall, just below where I wanted them to hang.

Then we stood back to see what we thought.
Then we moved it to the right.
More right.
Up.
More up.
Further right.
Up more.

Then Self slunk off… scurrying away to her cave and leaving me alone to tell Paul that maybe this was a mistake.

Because it turns out that now that the bookcases are safely mine, and there is no risk someone else will hoard them, I can acknowledge that POSSIBLY my plan was flawed.

Which is ironic, because Self told me this idea would save money.

Self had claimed to be worried about the financial equation of catbaby with cancer eradicating budget for kitchen remodel.

I have no idea if Self actually had good intentions or if this was just a ploy to skirt reasonable decisions.

Standing there in the kitchen, with half a bookcase on the wall, and half in the foyer, and surrounded by the general kitchen-chaos, vacation-mess-still-not-sorted, pounds of tomatoes, and other evidence that I am failing to be organized and adult… I felt defeated.

These are ALMOST exactly what I wanted… But if I had taken more than seven seconds to really think it through, maybe I would have seen them as a representation of THE THING. Rather than the ACTUAL thing.

Why do I have to be so impulsive?
Why is ambivalence never in my emotional vocabulary?
Why am I always running forward in seven directions at once?

Why am I so good at love, hate, joy, anguish… and terrible at the part where you pay attention… and put one foot in front of the other… and not wander off to examine the bark in the indecision forest?

I was pretty sure this would be the last straw for Paul; but when I told him— I’m sorry, this was a giant mistake… He just said— okay. Where do you want to put them?

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87 Comments

I agree with the crowd. These bookcases look great as kitchen cabinets. Perhaps what you aren’t liking is that they are “above the range??” I think maybe they would be better on the left side-wall, holding elegant china behind their wavy glass. 😉

Then, too, they wouldn’t get all the grease from cooking all over them. Hope Elvis is responding to treatment well. Paul is wonderful!

This makes me jealous. We are currently NOT restoring out 1895 victorian because it was so dismantled by the time we got to it there was nothing original left but the horse hair in the plaster….no thanks. We have spend the last 18 months gutting and rehabbing it in hopes that it will someday be a summer home our children will have no idea how much time money, sweat and tears went in to…I won’t mention to them all the beer cans the hubs and friends hid in the walls in the process. I will enjoy following your blog and showing my husband all the things we *could* have done!

This has nothing to do with your kitchen ,but I noticed those two black elephants are exactly like mine. My husband brought them back from Vietnam in the late 1960’s! where did you find yours ,and how are you using them in your kitchen? P>S. I look forward to your posts .

Dear Victoria, Don’t worry about pianos more than 100 years old. They are no good as far as sound goes. A piano only lasts 100 years according to Keith Jarrett, piano virtuoso who wrote about in “The Piano Book” by Larry Fine and Keith Jarrett. So if you need another piano don’t worry about messing up a playable piano. More than 100 years old? Tear it up–it’s not like a Stradivarious violin because pianos are much more complicated.

V: your insights helped me understand something about myself, so you are now not only a great source of amusement for me (that’s right, you amuse me), now you have become a sensei. It was the part about this is who you are, this is what’s important and you can hold it in for awhile, but it will always bubble out. AND it’s not to be apologized for because it is what makes me, me, and what makes us all the odd, complicated personalities that we are.
Thanks for sharing yourself. Keep talking to us.

Not that you need any more kitchen images but jenny andrews’ (myfavoriteandmybest) Nov 2 kitchen of the day would be an awesome way to incorporate whatever Elegancy finds next. Or at least justify the purchase of said find.

Because what they rendered of their kitchen didn’t finish the way they had anticipated….it looks great in the rendering but first I wouldn’t put 3 tiers of open shelves on top of fridge too high unless you use a step ladder and the fireplace pieces are probably to wide or narrow. I would put a different hood with the same texture or come up with faux cabinets the same texture to go in between both pieces